prothesis

hi, here's my entry. The sarting point for the design was to make a prothesis that people actually would use (instead of those wire/tubes - hanging out - stuff) i wanted to replicate the functions of a normal underarm, so i thought it out a little and here is the result..

The CPPS replaces the bones of the user's entire skull with articulated cyborg parts. It can be programmed to fit a range of bone structures to suit the user's specific cosmetic requirements. It will appeal to those suffering from severe deformities, injuries, secret agents, fugitives and celebrities.

First of all, sorry for the delay. I had to take care of a bunch of personal business this week and on top of that got sick the past few days.

MasterPete: Don't forget to post your entry in the Finals thread next time please. I copied it in here because I thought it'd be a shame not to have yours in the poll but next time I'll be more strict.

The Following User Says Thank You to MasterPete For This Useful Post:

Voted for MarkDN. I don't really know how it works, but I like the complexity of the piece and overall looks quite cool.
I was about to vote for the afro, because it's quite unique, sorry for not voting for that!

Achim and JellevdVegt's concepts are very well done, but they are much more common (specially the mechanic arm by JellevdVegt) so I didn't vote for them. But again, the quality was great!!.

Good work everybody. I hope I can do something for the next week, though I'll be doing also the C.O.W...

MarkDN: how does the skull work? because you cant replace someone's skull right? did you find a solution for that? and most celebrities already have a good charisma in some kind of way, so why would they use this? i would earlier expect wannabe celebrities / insecure people to completely change their looks.. why does it look so mechanical? i would expect it to have more rounder shapes, especially the cheeckbone because now it will form a weird form if you have skin around it... Why would you want to have teeth with those weird bolts sticking out... I think your design is not really well thought through, you use all this mechanical stuff because its an easy way to make your design look interesting but when you think about it longer then 3 seconds you realize your design is not much

Masterpete:The afro head is a very kewl idea actually!

Achim:I don't understand the concept.. what does a shield has to do with prostethics?

JellevdVegt; I fully appreciate the absurdity of a prosthetic skull. You may have detected a little irony in the understatement;

Installation is a non trivial operation. May result in scaring.

You can read that as a corporate medical industry BS euphemism for “HAVING THIS INSTALLED WILL F(*K YOU UP". So hey, it's horrific.

Ok, it's ridiculously impractical by the standards of contemporary medicine but this is for another world. A world where - should you be so inclined - you can have a new skull (Ghost in the Shell, Terminator, Robocop, Star Wars etc). But this isn't just any ol' spare cranium; it is cosmetically programmable - hence the mechanical bits.

This particular prosthetic skull is special because it has movable parts, allowing it to change shape. This allows for a mass produced 'one size fits all' model suitable for all customers who can then choose a bone structure according to the shape of their original skull, or something else entirely. The user could choose a new bone structure as often as they like.

Target market? Those with a deformity or disease such as Syphillis or Neurofibromatosis (Elephantisis) or Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, or some other bone warping disorder where the skull becomes mis-shapen. An out of work actor looking to revive a flagging career thinks it'd be pretty damned useful to get a whole new look – any time. A covert agent goes undercover in search of a dangerous fugitive and needs to be able to assume new identities at will. The dangerous fugitive is thinking the same thing. These desperate individuals are looking for a way to get ahead. A whole new head.

Installation involves peeling the old soft bits off, cutting apart and removing the old skull while maintaining the integrity of the brain and connecting nervous tissue, and then constructing the prosthetic skull around it. The surface layers are then reconstructed in all manner of fancy artificial cosmetic squidgy bits. Because you're worth it.

MarkDN - At a glance, I did "get" that the different bone features of the face, like chin, jaw, cheek, etc, were adjustable and why people in various conditions/situation would want that is easy to imagine - even if the installation is not.

Prosthetic Afro. That's awesome. I'll take two please.

JellevdVegt - I like the practical presentation. My only problem is I think the individual parts a too "chunky." For example, the hydraulic system looks like a bike pump and the "bones" are thicker and more bulky than the real bones they are meant to replace. I think it gives a look of simplicity without any elegance.

Achim – sketchy, would have been good to see more effort composing and finishing this, but I'm a sucker for the nasty cold design aesthetic and extra shield functionality so I voted for it. More next time?

JellevdVegt – it's a prosthetic arm, competently rendered, I like that. My issue with this is simply that it doesn't excite me at all. The brief was to design something “beyond the obvious”(-yoitisi) in terms of functionality, and I don't feel you've done that. Let's face it, from a technical medical point of view we're way out of our depth when it comes to designing prosthetics, so we may as well go a little bit 'out there' with the concept. There are already prostheticroboticarms in existence that go beyond the design and functionality you've demonstrated here.

I would have voted for MasterPete's because it's so quirky and fun; it's just a bit light on industrial design.